Reliance launches BlackBerry wireless solutions for the first time on CDMA network in India

Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Research in Motion (RIM) have launched the innovative BlackBerry wireless solutions for the first time on CDMA network in India. It will be available across 10,000 towns and three lakh villages, thus making it the most widely connected BlackBerry service in the country. Reliance Communications is the first to launch BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Smartphone in India that allows interoperability between the more data efficient CDMA and ubiquitous GSM network, delivering high Internet speed and international roaming.

Reliance Communications has also become the first CDMA provider in India to carry the Bloomberg Professional service on BlackBerry via Reliance Mobile. With Bloomberg on BlackBerry, subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional service can receive and send Bloomberg e-mail and Bloomberg instant messages, view their customised Bloomberg data, news, analyses, charts, monitors, market updates and other Bloomberg services wirelessly 24 hours a day.

With its dominant market share on the back of its fully integrated enterprise solution, Reliance is well poised to extend business applications through BlackBerry. The BlackBerry 8830 provides the industry leading email and messaging capabilities that are known of the popular BlackBerry solution the world over, along with premium phone features, web browsing and other mobile productivity applications. This sleek and stylish smartphone features a full QWERTY keyboard, large bright display, intuitive trackball navigation system, a microSD expandable memory slot and an advanced media player for listening to music, viewing pictures and watching videos.

Prakash Bajpai, President, RCOM, said, “As the first player to offer BlackBerry World Edition Smartphone in India, we are confident that our network will offer a superior value proposition to professionals on the move. Reliance is committed to provide world-class solutions on BlackBerry Enterprise server and we will take BlackBerry ‘beyond email’. For the first time in India, we are launching BlackBerry service with applications such as Internet-based online trading and Blackberry on prepaid. Many more such solutions will follow suit. And as modern day executives and entrepreneurs prefer to be kept well informed even while on the move, it is our endeavour to offer them the services they look for. Thus, Bloomberg Professional on our CDMA powered BlackBerry handsets gels with our philosophy of enhancing customer experience.”

The BlackBerry 8830 and 8703e handsets will be available in 16 cities to start with and will be expanded to other cities in phase II. RCOM has launched BlackBerry Pearl on its GSM network in a phase-wise manner starting with Indore.

“Bloomberg is extremely pleased to offer our customers in India the convenience and portability of Bloomberg on BlackBerry,” said Gerard Joseph Francis of Bloomberg. The Bloomberg service would be available on the newly launched models like BlackBerry 8100 Pearl priced at Rs 24,990, BlackBerry 8703E priced at Rs 22,990, BlackBerry Curve priced at Rs 24,990, and BlackBerry World Edition priced at Rs 33,990.